Desi Serna – Getting Started with the Pentatonic Scale

This video program is intended for intermediate level students who have already progressed past the beginning stages of guitar playing. The pentatonic scale is one of the most common scales in all of popular music. It’s used to play melodies, riffs, lead guitar solos and bass lines. In this video program you will learn the five pentatonic patterns plus how to use the scales, application, improvisation and technique.
Topics covered include, connecting the patterns and covering the whole fretboard, transposing to different keys, major and minor tonalities, the blues scale, hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, bends and alternate picking, guitar theory and how to know what scale to play over chords, and what popular pentatonic songs you should look up and learn. Getting Started with the Pentatonic Scale DVD is taught by music theory expert, guitar teacher and publisher Desi Serna and is based on his book Fretboard Theory Chapter 2. The lesson material is suitable for both acoustic and electric guitar.
In this video, Serna presents the five pentatonic patterns and shows how they connect on the guitar neck. There are exercises to develop muscle memory and a list of songs, in which pentatonic scales are used. In fact, the proposed strategy is, by combining the exercises and playing the suggested songs, you will be able to develop and express your musical ideas. Serna also shows how to apply pentatonic scales to chord progressions and songs, opening doors to improvisation and composing. He is good teacher and the DVD is self-contained, but if you are an absolute beginner, you may need look into additional resources, which can be easily found free online. Still regarding beginners, there are also demonstrations of hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends, slides, and alternate picking, which you will need when playing the suggested songs.